The Replacement Kiss
by fadewithfury
Summary: Rose and the Doctor address the Cassandra kiss, and agree on a way to replace the unsettling memory.


This fic was prompted to me by an anonymous Tumblr user. The prompt was Ten/Rose, first kiss after New Earth. Unbeta'd, all mistakes are mine. Thanks for reading! :)

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The Doctor rounded the console, adjusting switches and dials as he went. He observed the viewscreen in silence as the TARDIS dematerialized and entered the time vortex. After a couple of minutes, they hit a spot of turbulence, and he flipped up a handle, pounded the mallet, and punched a button, culminating in smooth sailing. It was all so methodical, deliberate, precise, even—with not an ounce of flourish. His mouth was a thin line. In fact, he was all thin lines, and no words.

Rose shifted on the jump seat, watching him, her head tilted and thumbnail between her teeth. "Something wrong, Doctor?"

He turned his back to her, fidgeting with a row of toggles. "I'm sorry, Rose."

"How come?"

"Well." He scratched the back of his head. "For the, er…" He turned towards her and made a vague gesture around his mouth. "When you were Cassandra."

Oh. The kiss. Rose remembered it, tried to stop it, even. But Cassandra was just too strong, like she knew what parts of her mind to manipulate to use for her own ends. (Like the part of her mind that longs for him, the part of her mind that was curious if he'd kiss her back, and the part of her mind that tells her to go after what she wants). She'd felt his lips against hers, but she couldn't remember the taste. And though her hands had clawed through his hair, she couldn't remember how it felt, because she'd forced herself to detach when the struggle to regain control had failed. She didn't want to know. Not like that.

She took a deep breath and patted the seat next to her. "Come, sit."

He lifted an eyebrow and inhaled, puffing out his chest. He then sighed and crossed the distance in one stride, plopping next to her and sprawling a bit with an arm draped over the seatback behind her.

Rose's heart swooped at his proximity, at how his thumb was so close to her arm, how if she just leaned a bit, he'd be touching her. But, she sat forward and turned to face him, one leg folded on the seat.

"You didn't do anything wrong, Doctor. _I'm_ sorry. I'm sorry she used my body to kiss you." There, just cut to the chase. "Couldn't seem to stop her."

He tugged at his ear and folded in on himself a bit, forearms resting on his thighs as he leaned forward. "You had no control over that; she was proficient for a... er, a human. I'm the one who should bloody well know when your mind has been compromised."

She pressed her hands into her lap and scrunched her shoulders as a shudder swept through her, remembering the feeling, then released the tension in a rush of breath. "S'okay, really. I mean, I'm not upset at you. Anyway, I don't remember much of it. The kiss."

He tilted his head and looked at her askance. "No?"

She shook her head once. "D'you? I mean, 'course you do, I guess."

"Yeah."

"Sorry." Rose swept a strand of hair behind her ear and plucked another stand, rolling it between her fingers, noticing the split ends.

"I didn't realize at the time that—well—your voice was a bit off, but." He sniffed and shrugged a shoulder. "Thought maybe you'd just finally taken to my new face and were quite excited about it."

She dropped the strand of hair and stared at him. "So, you thought I'd just up and give you a big snog with my shirt half undone?"

"I dunno. Maybe a new me brings out a new you?" He waggled his eyebrows.

She laughed. "Oh, you are so—wait, so why were you so, I dunno." She shook her head, looking up at the central column for the right word. "Quiet? Earlier. Not even a single hop."

"I knew you'd probably be upset about your mind being—" he wiggled his fingers alongside his head. "Worried you might not wanna keep…" He looked around the room, as if to indicate their surroundings, and then shrugged away the rest of his thought, bottom lip jutting out as he pursed his lips.

Rose bumped his knee with her foot. "Oh, you're not getting rid of me that easily."

"Really?"

"Really." She tilted her head against her shoulder and smiled. "Been through a lot, you and me. Worse than that, even, yeah? It's all just wonderful—this life. Not easy, but worth it, you know? Like I said, I love travelling with you."

He perked up, bright eyes drawn to her smile, and for a long moment he simply gazed at her. Rose felt herself being drawn closer to him, though she wasn't sure if he'd moved at all. And then his eyes flicked down briefly. He swallowed and nodded as he met her gaze again. "Good! Brilliant."

Rose looked down to see what had stolen his glance. "Oh, hell." She worked on buttoning up her shirt, feeling herself turn five shades of red. Could've been because the Doctor had most definitely checked her out. But also—back to Cassandra, exposing bits of her body she normally wouldn't have exposed. Humiliation and hope made rather strange bedfellows.

"So, it's not going to be weird that we've sort of kissed, then?"

The Doctor shook his head. "No."

She relaxed at that. "For me either."

"Although…"

Rose's heart began to race, and her lips parted, but all that came out was a little whisper of breath. Here it comes; polite rejection. A carefully crafted _I don't do kissing_ notice.

He squinted at her, scratching the back of his neck. "Wasn't really how I...uh, imagined, well, at least in retrospect."

"Imagined what?" Her breathing sped up, matching her pulse, and otherwise she grew very still.

"Err."

She could practically see the gears shifting in his head, pulling him away from what he had just about confessed. Scrambling to keep him there, she put a hand on his.

"Tell me. It's not gonna change anything for me, Doctor."

He turned his hand to slide his palm against hers, fingers curling around and thumb sweeping her wrist. "Rose," he began, and licked his lips, but he said nothing more, and she did her best to hide the creeping disappointment. Still, it was better than what she'd feared.

"It's all rather intimate, kissing," he said at last.

"Yes."

"I thought it was you, at first, so, thought you should know that." He couldn't seem to look at her as he spoke. "But it wasn't, and—" He made a face.

"Maybe we should kiss again. You know, to sort of, replace the memory. Yeah? Nothing big, just to show we're good?"

The Doctor tilted his head, eyeing her. "That we're good at kissing?"

"Well, um. That we're adults. That we can get past it and not have things be weird."

"We don't have to kiss to do that, Rose." His eyes narrowed and a little grin quirked his lips. "Unless, oh, Rose Tyler. You_ want_ to kiss me again, don't you?"

Rose managed to turn five more shades of red and she couldn't help but grin as she pulled her bottom lip behind her teeth. "Shut up."

"You do!" He positively beamed, sitting up straighter than he had all day. "Well, let's do it then."

"R—really?" Was this a dream? She pulled a swath of hair around to hide her face. "You want to?"

"Your argument for it was sound."

"All right, then." She let go of her hair and shook her head to toss it back from her face, and then squared her shoulders to face him fully.

The look in the Doctor's eyes shifted from boyish mirth to something a bit more serious, and a bit more inviting. He shifted as well, his arm propping on the seatback behind him as he twisted towards her. He brought his leg up on the seat so that it was parallel to hers, and their clasped hands came to rest atop their ankles.

Rose swallowed, hoping her keenness wasn't too palpable, too off-putting for him.

"Shall we count? On three?"

"Um." Rose blinked, and licked her lips.

He leaned in, as though drawn towards her by that little gesture of her tongue. He _had been_ staring at her mouth.

"I think we should just-" And oh, she had leaned in as well, and now they were so very close. She felt his thumb draw a soothing circle on her wrist.

"Yeah," he whispered, tilting his head just as their lips touched.

Her eyes fluttered closed, and she pressed her lips against his, firm but controlled. His lips were soft and pliant, and she wanted to taste them, wanted to graze her tongue along the seam, but they hadn't agreed to that.

His hand tightened around hers and he released the kiss, only to go back in at a slightly deeper angle, capturing her top lip between his. This meant she had his bottom lip in hers, and that was enough to squash any remaining anxiety, allowing a fire to ignite in her veins. _Oh_, his taste. It was right there, and she sought it out with a brief swipe of her tongue. He reached for her in reflex, cradling her face in his hand.

She lifted up, drawn even closer to him, and pressed just a bit harder against his lips, unable to quiet the whimper that sounded in the back of her throat.

He picked up her hand and placed it on his head, nudging it a little, and she withdrew from the kiss with a wet little smack.

"Wha?" She took a shaky breath, and admired the besotted smile on his face.

"You'll have to do that thing with your hands, to get the full effect," he said, blinking slowly.

Her mind was so hazy it took her a moment to put two-and-two together. "Oh! Right." She began to slide her fingers through the soft strands, her fingertips massaging his scalp. "Like that?"

His eyes had already closed and he hummed.

Rose laughed, and just kept on, enjoying the feel of his hair between her fingers. "S'nice."

He just leaned forward until his face crashed against her shoulder, his own shoulders slumping as he relaxed. She thought she heard a muffled affirmation, but she just giggled and kept on, now scratching her nails lightly through the short hairs at the back of his neck.

"Better than kissing?"

She felt him inhale, his face burrowed against the collar of her shirt. He then sat up, and blinked, shaking his head. "Sorry. Did you say something?"

He ran a hand through his hair, and she smirked at her handiwork—several locks stuck out at all angles, much more so than usual.

"S'nothing." She suddenly felt very certain that she didn't want to know. She'd much rather just float there, lingering in the pleasant, tingling sensation that filled her every cell, the unnerving memories of Cassandra rattling around in her head all but banished for now.

His eyes remained hooded and dark, though he very distinctly began to put some distance between him as he slid his leg off the chair. "Right then, now that we've affirmed that we're adults, and have thoroughly replaced that memory with something much more agreeable," he said with a wink. "Where are we heading next?"

"Surprise me!"

"Oh, yes! I love it when you say that." He leapt up and went for the controls at once, flair and delight once again imbued into his every move.

Rose sat forward, her hands grasping the seat as her toes kicked back and forth along the grated flooring. She smiled as she watched him, heart soaring and hope unfurling like the bright blue sky over the windswept hill of applegrass.


End file.
